The participants stood in a rough circle, solemn and silent, as the bloody experiment drew to a closure. Leonard the Ace (teferi) was not the only man with trembling hands, as he stepped into the centre of the circle. Emperor Palmer followed slowly, an intricate Aztec-styled sacrificial blade gripped so tightly in his hand that his knuckles gleamed white. With a sudden downward plunge the knife slid smoothly in a vertical arc through Leonard's throat - with a gagging cry he fell to the stone, staining the white snow with crimson.

A second later, the corpse was joined by Emperor Palmer's decapitated head, and they all knew it was over. Behind him stood Daisy (TeeHee), a bitter grin etched into her face even as she completed the transformation into a huge black wolf. With a rending sweep of claws, Mr Teach's (fishy wanderer) chest was ripped open, and he collapsed on the ground with nothing more than a shocked gasp. With a scream Bobby Staples (schnell olfy) turned to run, but his quickness was unable to save him from the great paw which descended upon him, droving his forehead into the stone ground of the temple. Bearnard (Wyatt Waste Ranger) charged at the beast, determined to go down fighting, and was unburdened of his throat for his courage. Knowing what was coming, Chase Wattz (ryace) and Walter Witman (Hircine) threw themselves off the cliff and into the void below, screaming as they plummeted. Zachary Dawson (Skoomaholics Anonymous) backed away with trembling hands, considering fleeing but certain it would not help - this was proven seconds later as his blood sprayed across the snow. Will Powers (Spork the Slightly Insane) faced his death stoically, flinching only as the claws descended upon him. The storm was over, but in a sense it was only beginning - as Daisy stood perched alone on the mountain temple, a clouds formed above with supernatural speed. Snowfall turned into a raging blizzard, which grew stronger and faster and whiter until everything in the world was nothing but white...




They opened their eyes slowly, and were astonished to find themselves within the Atom Heart Research Facility once again. Everybody was there - Brian (SpEcTrE), Avery (FateOrFatality), Hamish (Boston); the whole group, alive and well. The bewildered group were again blinded by white flashes, and they looked up to see groups of reporters milling about behind white safety-lines, cameras rolling. A tiny, weedy-looking man was walking around the circle, shaking hands warmly and introducing himself as Dr Palmer. With a broad smile, he turned to the group as a whole.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my intense pleasure to inform you that the experiment was a greater success than we could have hoped for. Not only have we made astonishing observations regarding Neurochemical Manipulation, but we have gathered incredible data about the human psychology, and about the inherent flaws in decision-making under pressure! Your failure has been a triumph... for Science!" He turned and bowed indulgently for the reporters, who broke out into applause. One reporter, however, was not so exuberant. "How can you be sure that there will be no adverse effects from this... Experiment? You're playing around with these people's brains, how can you be certain you haven't influenced them?" This was met by a broad grin from Dr Palmer. "My dear girl, it's proven by Science, and by our extensive mathematical calculations. Irrefutable. Two plus two will always, as they say, make four.... and four, four never changes." Ignoring the reporters, the drained participants slowly filed out of the room. Not a word was spoken - most of them walked beside their own murderers, and even imagined wounds can sometimes never heal.



As they exited the Atom Heart Research Facility, Charles (mrcrazy_monkey) lagged behind. As the group disappeared from view, a smile touched his lips, and as he stepped down the stone steps he transformed effortlessly into a familiar black shape. As four gray wolves slipped in behind him, his joyful howl echoed through the city.


Free.







Wolf Victory!










I'd like to start by thanking everybody who participated in the game - I came out of the game not hating every single player, which is definitely a credit to you all. I hope that you enjoyed the game, and I look forwards to hearing your feedback on how you found my hosting in this game. In particular, I'd like to know what you thought of my ruleset; how you found my hosting availability/organisation; how you found the evidence in the game; and what you thought of the writing/story elements. I'll leave my own feedback later on, as well as awards for outstanding players.

If you're interested in hosting soon please say so, but I'd appreciate 24 hours of feedback before you post a signup in the thread for feedback.

I think I'll post my judgement tomorrow, when I'm not so tired, but I thought I'd get the first word in, as I'm better than everyone else.

Cheers for the game, Donkey - short as it was for me, I was still entertained throughout the rest of the game, despite being dead

And on that note, I will hunt down the next person to kill me on the first day. Monkey, I have plans for you... :flamethrower:

Ah, I see where we went wrong. It never occurred to me that Daisy tried to poison Vincent, but he figured it out one way or another. I still can't reall find a connection with the last days evidence though.
Overall I thought the different locations and writing were good, and that the host time difference was only a minor annoyance, because you seemed to answer all of our questions in one way or another.
I still don't understand why Leonard lied about being a judge.

Nice game overall. The writing was top-notch, and I liked the references sprinkled here and there. Organization was good - I can imagine managing every player's points must have been a chore. I felt the days ended at different times every day, but I might be imagining things. One minor issue is that the opening posts for each day were usually edited after posting. I know in one case that affected the writeup/evidence (and was somewhat warranted), and I expect in other cases it was cosmetic changes. Regardless of the reason, for a player, coming to a thread and seeing the opening post edited gives the feeling that they may have missed something. It would be nice if all edits to the OP were listed. This is similar to the reason we instated the no-editing-out-votes rule.

I have mixed feelings about ending the game at this point. On one hand, it has already gotten too long and the innocents were mostly inactive or on the wrong trail. But on the other, the state of the game did not meet the ending conditions in the rules AFAIK. I suppose I would've made the same call, but it would be nice for future rulesets to adopt a rule about maximum game length or minimum innocent activity.

And on a somewhat related note, did you have a different ending in mind had the innocents won?

Anyway, on to evidence. First off, I'd love to see a full list to check what we may have missed. The evidence I did catch and use in my investigations seemed to be very uneven. The first few days you gave us nothing but vague little clues, then dropped the mind-reading cave which was very fun to crack, but also way too informative - most of my cases were based around it. I also thought the poisoning was quite obvious (and I called it right after death), so I'm surprised the remaining innocents didn't even consider Daisy.

This brings me to another aspect. In years past, many hosts tended to overuse physical evidence and most of us raged because it was often too incriminating. In this game, I think you went too far to the other side. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single piece of evidence that wasn't based on the culprit's personality or toughness. Some balance between the two might have been better. There were also simply too few pieces of evidence. Having more evidence but with a few red herrings can make discussions much more lively.

On to the ruleset. The only significant change from standard is the point system. I found it interesting and not as complicated as I originally feared. The Dead Lounge was full with people complaining that the investigations gave innocents too much of an edge, but I think that's not really true. The wolf team shares points and can easily coordinate the framing of the prime suspects. Sure, the cost of investigation was a little low (3-4 points would be my estimate for a fair one), but I expected the wolves to be framing all the time, especially since we announced investigation plans in the thread, so I didn't trust the results too much.

Having many Judges with the ability to grant points opens up a world of possibilities which we hardly touched upon this game. My little trick with getting Woolly to protect me by giving him enough points and suggesting that I know of the fact in the thread at the right time is only a trivial example. On the whole, if the council cooperates with each other, they can discover/announce/prove their identities pretty easily. Just have every Judge announce themselves on Day 1, then decide on a circular order of point giving that night, e.g. J1->J2->J3->J4->J1. If any one judge does not receive a point, the previous link in the chain is an impostor. Given that judges outnumber wolves at the start, I expect this can be further reinforced against tampering with just a little more planning.

tl;dr: Nice game, uneven evidence, point system has potential.

P.S. Spork, you did really well, especially if this is your first game (or even if you played a few). Also, Teferi was a Judge.

The lack of evidence it seemed like we all had to put our votes on player profiles and how the wolves attacked. And shifting areas really made the game harder for evidence. It was good writing but I can't take that many pink floyd references. I was disappointed to say the least. Normally I am use to the threads to be longer the lack of evidence was practically the first person to scream wolf and show some possible traits as evidence . Also, I dislike radically shifting areas , barely any evidence. Ok I am done ranting of sort.

Ah, really? Damn. He could've cleared it up by posting who he gave points two in the last two nights, and then the person could've confirmed.
Anyways, good game everyone.

I'll provide an evidence list sometime tomorrow, I'm somewhat exhausted at the moment. Key points were that the wolf was physically unable to keep up with the human, the wolf didn't kill a sleeping human while alone with them in a room (due to both physical inability and bitterness) and that the tiny cut on his shoulder concerned and agonized him more than the face-rending gash across his beloved features (meant to indicate poisoning).

Also, I'll echo Max's praise for your first game, you really did do a remarkable job.



Thanks for the detailed and considered feedback, I really appreciate that. You weren't imagining things, the day-end time did vary when people popped over or I had things to do - my fault for poor time management. I hadn't even considered the issue with editing write-ups prior to now, I'll definitely keep it in mind. We've had a few issues with game end rules over the past few games (including my last one), I'm just not quite sure how to develop a pre-planned end condition which is flexible enough to prevent the game from really stagnating, or ending prematurely. Some kind of minimum-activity system could be worth a trial. To be completely honest I didn't even have the wolf ending planned out until about three hours ago, so nope, didn't really have any idea.

Regarding the lack of physical evidence, that was a conscious decision (after feedback from my last game ) not to include things like "possessions" in the character profile, but in retrospect I don't think it's a decision I'd repeat - as you pointed out it's really hard working with pretty much solely personality evidence, and I think it probably frustrated some players. I'd probably remove the "strengths" and "weaknesses" sections, too. I'm also disappointed that both sides under-used the point system and opportunities presented, and I'd love to see it trailed (and refined) in another game. Thanks again for the feedback.



Thanks for the feedback. If I'm interpreting this right, you disliked the lack of concrete physical evidence (eg not based on personalities); the changing setting and the Pink Floyd references (which were only the lyrics in the subheadings). The lack of physical evidence is something to correct. I'd be interested to hear what others thought of the changing setting - from a hosting perspective I really enjoyed it. I'm sorry if the sub-header references were too much.

First off good game Donkey_Cavity. Next I think like a few others the lack of Physical Evidence at first really meant that us as players just went off things that people had put in their sign up as to their personality etc thus leading to four days at least of killing innocents and judges.

On the subject of the changing locations it made sense to do it as the setting made it make sense, the point system was a good addition to the game and I think if it's not used in every game that is played it will work really well with some work. I admit I wasn't as prolific in giving out points while I was still in the game but I like the idea of maybe having judges reveal themselves early on with a rotation of point giving in the game.

The day end times are something you couldn't help if you've had guests over etc and your Write ups were good to read even after being killed off. However I have to say that it was disappointing to see that it seemed to be the fact that most days ended after only 2 pages of posts from those participating as I've read the games where they've gone to 8 or 9 pages before but that's not something you can help if players aren't posting.

I'd also like to say that Spork had a great game and generally though things out over executions etc.

I was executed because SOMEBODY FORGOT TO PUT THE CHANGE IN INVESTIGATION PRICES ON THE OP! I do have a bad memory at times, and since it said 5 points to purchase, I thought it meant 5 points to purchase :verymad:

then why would sporks investigation bring you up as innocent, instead of judge.

Was this some sort of mistake?

Also, yeah it was fun (while it lasted). I also think there should have been more actual evidence to look at.

It seemed i was killed because of 8 words on my profile :tongue:

Well thanks guys. Its actually my second game (courtroom one was first) but I hardly played a role in it. Teferi, you could've saved yourself if you would've told us who you gave points to. The players could've confirmed and you'd be off the hook.
One thing about the points system was that it really didn't come into play until later in the game. I don't know if it supposed to be like that, but perhaps if we started with two points instead of of one some innocent deaths could've been prevent.
Also Teferi, the reason why I thought you were lying was because I thought I was the last judge. Sorry about that.

Also I'd like to give a special thanks to Max_aka_NOBODY. He really helped me get my ideas together and presented ideas that I didn't think of. That private communication channel was well worth it.

Great job Spork!

If it makes you feel any better, I was planning on converting you last night.

Anyway, great game as always DC. Can't wait for the next one. ^_^

Yeah the game was good.

Well even though i didnt play much, it was fun just reading it and seeing how it played out for everyone.

Host again soon DC\

Also "Four, Four never changes"

Lol Fallout joke

I really enjoyed it for my first game. I'll try and be more active next time. (stupid flu getting me within days of starting).

I'll chime in on the lack of physical evidence aswell. I thought Daisy was the wolf because of the setting. But I didn't anything to back it up with, no physical evidence or profile evidence.

Despite being killed early, I thought it was good. Minor balance issues, but it's an experimental game. Evidence got kind of heavy handed there towards the end.

With a few tweaks, I think the point system could be viable.

This is what threw me about TeeHee being the final wolf. This write-up from day 8, to me, say that she was on the dance floor when the kill went down.

Other than that I was behind the 8-ball the entire game with evidence, the point system has a lot of potential, I just wish I had accumulated more or been gifted points. the write-ups were a blast to read, so cudos on that.

Hmm, I wasn't a player, but I observed the game the entire way through(didn't sign up because of Issues I've been having with my internet). I liked the new points system, seemed to add a whole new dimension to the game, though yeah, it did seem awfully under-used. Lots and lots of potential down that avenue. Game seemed a bit biased towards the wolves in the beginning, then towards the innocents in the middle due to amounts of evidence given. Really dislike the solely personality based evidence as others have also pointed out. I've always been a big fan of possessions, makes it a lot easier to plant evidence that is still hard to decipher, but solveable.

Over-all, looked like to me another great game by you DC.

Start another game soon man.

Oh also, i loved the Pink Floyd References.

Ha! I didn't die in the simulation! I'm so ninja! ^_^

Anyway, that was a lot of fun. My second game, but I wasn't very active in the first one. The personality based evidence was a bit on the hard side, though. Other than that, I liked it.

Fun game. I really enjoyed the point system, it was a bit unbalanced with investigations but you managed to fix that. The setting was awesome, but I was disappointed that there were no Inception references.

Thanks for hosting, DC.

It was a really good game. At times it felt the evidence was too condemning or too weak but both sides had really good plays.

I say my highpoint was when I orchestrated for a conversion to be done after I was dead (TeeHee:3). Wolf low point was the lack of shallow delaying tactics I have seen used in many other games. For the innocents, Their highpoint had to be killing me then next day getting a double, both wolves. Low point for the innocents had to be the early game blood lust that almost got them a no hitter.

I think I will play the next game to come up and hope I get to play as an innocent for once. Plotting can be good but I want to solve these for once.

I'll play the next game, no matter whom the host may be.

As for this game, I can't say much as an outside observer, but it sounds like DC was willing to tweak the game and its evidence as it played through without being heavy-handed with the alterations, and that's certainly a good thing even if it isn't an experimental ruleset. I'm unsure whether I agree with the preset game-over duration, but I can certainly see the reasons for it. Good work everyone, and DC especially.

You obviously didn't read my posts. I made an inception joke. Mainly because no one else did.

I think Donkey may well recall my opinion, I've been badgering him about it for days after all. :biggrin:
Good writing, although there could be some improvements to the evidence and points system. A blast to read and follow up, even if I couldn't join.
Someone host another one quickly and I'll join this time.